Over the past months I've had my NLP repeatedly derailed by a recurring injury to my neck/Trap area on the left side. Basically, mid-set I'll feel and hear a popping noise, followed by a lot of pain. Typically the pain will last 1-3 weeks before healing up enough to train again. The first time I had no idea what was going on and went to the urgent care. Doctor said all the muscle in the area was extremely pissed off and gave me a toradol shot and prescribed muscle relaxers and ibuprofen (too weak help shit). The pain is sharp and prevents me from driving since I can't turn my head, and makes sleeping difficult until it subsides.
I've triggered it during the overhead press several times and once during the deadlift as well. Even when these episodes subside, my neck area feels tight, and if I look down or up, the same area hurts with a similar, but lesser pain. So that's what it's like normally, and I guess it gets randomly set off badly while training at times. Does anybody have any idea what's going on and how I can prevent this happening again?
I know how this board feels about silly shit, but is this potentially something I can prevent by stretching or doing some sort of warm up protocol for? If not what might work better? Thanks